UK travel chaos as Gatwick remains closed

Flights through London's busy Gatwick Airport have been suspended for a second time after briefly re-opening early Thursday morning leading to travel chaos.

Inbound flights have been diverted to airports across the UK and Europe. The airport has just tweeted: Thursday 07.40: Flights to and from Gatwick remain suspended, due to drone activity. Please do not travel to the airport without checking with your airline first. We 're sorry for the inconvenience today, but the safety of our passengers and staff is our no.1 priority. The BBC tweeted: "I have a drone on my airfield... and #Gatwick will not be able to reopen until that drone is brought down" - Gatwick's Chief Operating Officer Chris Woodroofe apologises to passengers and says flights to and from the airport remain suspended Easyjet has tweeted:

1. We have offered affected passengers who were diverted ground transportations to reach Gatwick and hotel accommodation was provided. Passengers who arranged their own transportation will be reimbursed by easyJet.
2. easyJet‏Verified account @easyJet 5m5 minutes ago

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   Customers on cancelled flights will be entitled to a free of charge transfer to an alternative flight. Whilst the situation is outside of our control we would like to apologise to passengers for the inconvenience caused.

 

Authorities closed the airfield for five hours from 11:03 pm London time on December 19 to 3:01 am on December 20.

The closure caused passengers to be delayed at Gatwick and flights diverted after two of the unmanned devices were spotted near a runway. Gatwick averages 780 flight movements and 125,000 passengers per day but this would be a particularly busy time ahead of Christmas. Passengers tweeted that they were stuck on planes at Gatwick while others said they were diverted to Heathrow and Manchester. Read: World's Best Airlines for 2019 Airport authorities said a further drone sighting after the airport re-opened had forced the runway to be closed again from 3:45am  and it was investigating the sighting with Sussex police. "We will update when we have suitable reassurance that it is appropriate to re-open the runway,'' they said. The authorities advised anyone traveling on December 20 or collecting someone from the airport to check the status of their flight. "Unfortunately, this has led to a number of flights being diverted to other airports while aircraft have also been unable to depart from Gatwick,'' the authorities said. "Our airlines are working to provide passengers with hotel accommodation or transport passengers landing at airports other than Gatwick by other means, and Gatwick staff are looking after passengers in our terminals.'' Flightradar 24 said earlier that over two dozen flights inbound to Gatwick had been diverted at that stage with others continuing to divert or hold pending an all clear. Some of the public response:

Ben Clewer Retweeted Gatwick Airport LGW

And another: And.... Developing story.